Mattapoisett women suing town over building inspections

MATTAPOISETT — All Nicki Demakis and Carla Fitzgerald wanted in August 2012 was a simple renovation to their Mattapoisett summer cottage.

By ARIEL WITTENBERG

MATTAPOISETT — All Nicki Demakis and Carla Fitzgerald wanted in August 2012 was a simple renovation to their Mattapoisett summer cottage.

The plan was to expand the master bedroom upstairs, add office space downstairs, and enlarge the front and back porch so that Demakis, a California attorney, and Fitzgerald, a retired Titleist worker, could start spending more time with family in Demakis' home town of Mattapoisett.

The project would take less than a year, they thought, and their new and improved Pearl Street home would be ready for summer 2013.

Instead, what they got was a "construction nightmare" that culminated this January when the state suspended the license of contractor Alan Desroches for six months due to multiple code violations at the Pearl Street home, according to a decision by the Board of Regulations and Standards.

Now, Demakis and Fitzgerald have given notice that they intend to sue Mattapoisett, saying the violations would have been caught sooner if Building Inspector Andrew Bobola had performed proper inspections.

The dispute centers on the structural support for the house's front and rear porch. The couple's construction plan required three concrete columns to be poured under the front porch and seven under the back porch. Before the concrete is poured, a contractor places a cardboard mold, called a sonotube, in the ground.

Once the concrete is poured — but before anything is built on it — the sonotubes must be inspected in order to comply with the town's building permit.

In an Oct. 16 letter obtained by The Standard-Times, Bobola told Demakis and Fitzgerald he had inspected their sonotubes on Aug. 1, 2013.

But dated photos taken by the couple on Aug. 2, 2013, show a portable toilet where the front porch sonotubes were supposed to be for the extended front porch. In the back, photographs show heavy equipment parked where the sonotubes would be.

Bobola referred all comments to the town's attorney, Jeffrey Blake. Blake said he could not comment on "the merits of the case" but said "the building inspector is looking forward to defending himself in court."

"We feel we have a legitimate defense against what are some really inflammatory allegations," he said.

The Board of Building Regulations, which disciplined Desroches, the contractor, describes him admitting in testimony that he had not even taken apart the original front porch by Aug. 2.

"Thus, DeRoches (sic) admitted that the sonotubes were not installed until sometime in the middle of August 2013," according to the decision.

Ultimately, the board decided that despite the timing discrepancy, Desroches did provide Bobola with the opportunity to inspect the sonotubes, meaning that Desroches did not himself violate code in this instance.

But the board did find Desroches violated code by installing sonotubes with different dimensions and placed in different locations than the construction designs called for.

The board found that the sonotubes that were eventually installed were also not sufficiently deep in the soil to be protected from frost, something they must do to comply with code. Instead of being 48 inches deep, they were 37 inches deep for the front porch and 33 inches deep in the back porch.

"The designs for the dimensions of the porch and deck footings, and for the porch exterior stairs' concrete base, were not followed," the decision says.

As a result of all the violations, a structural engineer hired by Demakis and Fitzgerald found that the porches would eventually sink into the ground and become unstable.

Desroches failed to return two calls to his business.

Following the state's decision against Desroches, Demakis and Fitzgerald also filed a complaint against Bobola with the state's Building Official Certification Committee.

The committee, which Bobola sits on, declined to take up the complaint.

Terrel Harris, a spokesman for the committee, said Bobola's sitting on the committee "had no bearing on the disposition of the complaint."

The committee decided the complaint was unfounded after determining that Bobola had simply dated his inspection card incorrectly. The committee also said that state code "provides some flexibility" in how sonotubes are installed.

It decided that Bobola has "knowledge of the region" and local soil conditions, and therefore could disregard the code-required 48-inch depth for sonotubes, Harris said.

Demakis and Fitzgerald said they then decided to sue the town for the $45,000 cost of the porches to ensure that Bobola was "held accountable for his actions.

"The last thing I want to do is litigate, but this is a public official blowing off his job and if he has done it with our house, what else has he done it on?" said Demakis, who lives in California with Fitzgerald for half the year.

"When we are gone, we trust that our contractor is doing what he said he would do, but also that the town is looking out for us during inspections. That just wasn't the case."

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